I know this was supposed to be quirky and weird, but I was hoping for a bit more mystery and a little less gag humor.
That being said, I didn't dislike this episode so much as I was somewhat disappointed. It seems that opposite to Maoyū, which surpassed my expectations, Inaba didn't really deliver on what I was hoping to see: a solid detective plot. There wasn't any sleuthing to be found in this premiere, and in a detective series that's definitely a fault rather than a strength. It's certainly one here, where the plot is driven by gags instead of any concrete proof that the "tantei" title is more than just a title. That's not to say that detective stories can't be funny; I've seen plenty of witty and outright silly ones. However, when the detective story eschews the "solving mysteries" part of the equation completely, the humor should at least be good enough to make up for it, and unfortunately that was not the case here.
I did chuckle in a few places, particularly when the characters occasionally broke the fourth wall (which always amuses me, regardless of context), but in general the series relies mostly on ridiculousness, which needs to be pulled off in a fresh manner for the humor to make an impression. A good example of this done well is
Ouran High School Host Club, which could venture into the bizarre and still retain its entertainment value, or
Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita, which used its outright dark and eccentric humor to its advantage. Other than that type of series, the "weird stuff happening for the sake of weirdness" gimmick has worn itself thin in anime, and
Inaba didn't really bring anything new to the table on that front.
Hiroshi Inaba (
Junichi Suwabe) is the titular character, a genetically modified werewolf who once worked as a "police dog" but quit prior to the beginning of the series to form his own detective agency. He has
two assistants, crossdresser Yuuta Sasaki (
Asami Shimoda) and sensible Kei Nozaki (
Miyu Irino) and an archnemesis, the
Italian goat Don Valentino (
Toru Okawa) who steals money for the sake of eating it. Normally in this sort of series the detective has some sort of cool ability or thinking skill, and Inaba comes through on that; his ability is to eat hair and gain special abilities depending on its color, with black hair having the effect of
depression on everyone in the immediate vicinity. However, we've yet to see Inaba's powers actually be useful in crime solving, as he's only transformed to fight Don Valentino and his underlings. Other than this power, our protagonist seems to be a bit
useless and eccentric, and the narration comes from Kei's viewpoint anyway, as the sole sensible character in the cast.
I don't want to be quick to judge, and I'd be lying if I said that I didn't at all enjoy this episode, but I don't see anything too special in this series that I'd be interested in blogging, so it's likely to be dropped after the "three episode" test unless the next two episodes change the game a bit. This seems to be the type of series that's fun to watch but doesn't carry much substance, and I can't say I even liked Inaba as a character much to make me stick around; he's interesting but not necessarily in a good way (though I did love the line about not believing in traps because he's sure everyone loves him) and the lack of detective prowess really dampens his potential even more. In any case, even if I do drop this from the blogging list, it did make me laugh so I'm likely to continue watching it past three episodes and occasionally mentioning it here and there if it does better later on.
ED "Prima Stella (プリマ・ステラ)" by Toru Okawa
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